New Delhi: Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra was expelled from the Lok Sabha today, December 8, after the Ethics Committee of the Lok Sabha tabled its report recommending as much over allegations she took money to ask questions in parliament. Speaker Om Birla did not allow Moitra to speak.
After giving members of parliament only two hours to read the 104-page report after it was tabled, a 30-minute discussion was scheduled for 3 pm today. However, Moitra’s expulsion was announced within just a few minutes of debate starting, and not even the entirety of the small slot allotted was used.
Opposition MPs questioned the ethics committee for not cross examining Darshan Hiranandani and also on how parliamentarians were essentially pronouncing judgement against a fellow parliamentarian.
Stepping out of parliament, Moitra said this was a kangaroo court. “Since I was not allowed to speak inside parliament, I am taking this opportunity to speak outside it. I thank my INDIA alliance colleagues…as the hearing of the ethics committee demonstrates, all of us MPs are conveyor belts to get questions from the people to the parliament. If the Modi government hopes that by shutting me up it can forget the Adani issue, then it is mistaken.”
Moitra was accompanied by top Congress, Bahujan Samaj Party and TMC leaders, including Sonia Gandhi, Danish Ali and others.
“I don’t understand how the [parliament] members will go through the 495 pages [of the report] within half an hour and how all the speakers will take a decision. I congratulate the INDIA alliance for being united, and we will fight back. In this case, Mahua is a victim of the circumstances. I strongly condemn this and the party completely stands with Mahua,” TMC chief Mamata Banerjee said, according to the news agency PTI.
The report lead to stormy scenes and the adjournment of the house till 2 pm. When the house reconvened, Speaker Birla allowed a 30-minute discussion – on the report tabled barely two hours ago.
The controversial report had earlier been listed to have been tabled in the Lower House for December 4 but it was not tabled on that day.
PTI noted that once the report was tabled TMC and Congress parliament members trooped in the Well, demanding a copy of the report. TMC MP Kalyan Banerjee asked for a discussion before a vote on Moitra’s expulsion. On the chair then was BJP MP Rajendra Agrawal who adjourned proceedings.
After the adjournment, Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury wrote to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, saying that people were not being given enough time to read the 104-page report, and that they need at least 3-4 days to do so properly.
Chowdhury requested as much during the discussion in the Lok Sabha, too. Congress MP Manish Tiwari, focusing on how a panel can at best recommend but not adjudge, said, “Today we are sitting as a court to judge our colleague, this is not a parliament.”
To this Speaker Birla said, “This is a parliament, there is no judge.”
TMC chief whip Kalyan Banerjee, said, “Person against whom a charge has been brought should be allowed to speak,” requesting again and again that Moitra be allowed to speak.
“We witnessed a complete destruction of parliamentary procedure…just so that the rule party could make a point of vendetta against a very vocal MP of the INDIA alliance. By procedure, the ethics panel does not have the power to expel anyone. Second thing, in everything they’ve talked about, there’s no cash link, no money trail, there’s absolutely nothing. Her only offence, if we were to listen to what was said in the Lok Sabha, is that she shared her log in credentials with a third person,” TMC Rajya Sabha MP Saket Gokhale told The Wire.
This is not an uncommon practice, he went on to say. “The second thing is, the ethics committee could have chosen to warn, or even suspended for the rest of the session, if they felt this was such a grave offence. But we see that the ethics committee chairman has been talking publicly, releasing the report of the ethics committee to the media…parliamentary ethics says until a committee report is tabled in the house, it is a confidential document. The claims that are being made against Mahua Moitra [about breach of confidentiality] are hilarious, because here we have the committee itself leaking the report to the house.”
‘Sharing of credentials’
Several leaders of the opposition, including those from Moitra’s party TMC, expressed grave opposition to the report outside parliament.
PTI reported TMC MP Sudip Bandyopadhyay as having noted that he had a one-on-one meeting with Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla on this report.
“He told the Speaker that Moitra should be given time to make her speech on the floor of the house to which Birla replied that half an hour would be given for discussion on the matter,” PTI said, of Bandyopadhyay, who also questioned why the MP who alleged that Moitra was paid cash for asking questions – Bharatiya Janata Party’s Nishikant Dubey – not called to the Ethics Committee meeting.
Dubey and Supreme Court lawyer Jai Anant Dehadrai had alleged that Moitra accepted cash and gifts from businessman Darshan Hiranandani as bribes for asking questions in the Lok Sabha. Moitra has denied these allegations, deeming them “completely baseless.” Moitra’s request that the committee summon Hiranandani and allow her to cross-examine him and Dehadrai were turned down by the committee.
The committee’s report called out Moitra for “unethical conduct” and “contempt of the House” for sharing her Lok Sabha log-in credentials with Hiranandani, which Moitra countered by saying that house members frequently share their credentials with interns and others.
As The Wire has noted, the committee, headed by BJP MP Vinod Kumar Sonkar, has been criticised because of the manner in which its meetings were conducted as well. One such meeting ended in a walkout not just by Moitra but also by five members of the opposition parties. “She was asked which hotel in Dubai she had stayed during her visits and with whom, etc. Opposition members found those questions posed to a woman member of parliament in an official platform very offensive and walked out of it,” an opposition MP told The Wire.
Before the day began, Moitra told the news agency ANI in Hindi that Durga had arrived. “We shall see now. When destruction comes, it is conscience that dies first. They started with disrobing, now you watch the battle of the Mahabharat,” she said.